What to do? Affiliate marketing vs ecommerce? or something else?

I have been studying influencers for months! Seems like everything they preach is no longer valid?

I've been promoting affiliate / CPA offers for over 19 years. However, I do things differently than most.

I heavily promote PPL (pay per lead...lead generation) offers. This is because there is no credit card / purchase required to complete an offer. All a user has to do is fill out a form, so conversion rates are typically much higher compared to offers that require a sale to be made.

I favor offers that have a make, get or save money benefit to them, as they have overall worked the best. They also tend to have the greatest mass appeal (will be of interest to a large general audience), so the potential exists to produce high volume and they are fairly easy to cross-promote on the back-end.

Some of the verticals (niches) I have done extremely well with are: education, insurance, loans, debt, credit, mortgage, assistance, discount offers, homeowner offers, etc...

The bulk of the PPL offers that I promote pay $15-$40 per lead, but I also promote offers that pay more and less. You don't want to get too caught up on what an offer pays because how well it converts is just as important. For example, if you have an offer that pays $9, but if it converts at 2X or more of a $20 offer, then it will perform about the same or possibly better. At the same time, if you have an offer that pays $90 and it converts poorly, it may not even be worth promoting.

I have also done just as good with dating website sign-ups and pretty good with free trial + S/H offers. I also promote a very limited number of offers that are straight sales. For them, mass appeal is still the number one thing I look for and I also look for one of the following...

1) The product is new and/or novel-unique and you can't purchase it locally or even something similar. I don't waste my time with it once something similar shows up in Walmart.

2) The buyer can truly get what is being offered at a decent discount.

3) Solves a house is on fire type problem.

However, I mainly promote non-PPL offers on the backend.

Bottom line, it's far easier to get someone fill out a short form than to get them to pull out their credit card and make a purchase. So why struggle with trying to sell this or that, when you can provide free information that users want/need and get paid well doing it.

I drive traffic and build responsive email lists by acquiring different forms of email data. Essentially what I'm really doing is monetizing the data using PPL offers.

Fresh / targeted 3rd party data, which is email leads of users that have shown an interest in a specific PPL niche or offer and have given permission to receive messages from third parties. You get the opt-in record of each user and it's 100% can-spam compliant.

Generate real-time Co-reg, which works by placing an ad for a specific PPL offer on a co-registration network and their publishers display it and users that view the ad can request more info about the offer. When a user requests more info, their contact info is automatically imported into your ESP (autoresponder) account / campaign and they are immediately sent details regarding the offer, along with future follow-up messages. You pay on a per lead basis.

There is also rev-share data, which is basically 3rd party data (typically fresh / targeted) that you get for $0 upfront costs and you split the revenue generated from sending it with the data provider. Those that provide rev-share are typically just aggregating the data and aren't marketers and provide it to those that know how to monetize it.

So with the above, I am getting fresh / targeted leads specifically for the offers I'm promoting. However, they are not typically as responsive as a high-quality opt-in list that you build yourself. So to compensate for this you need to work with higher volume. This is not a big deal since the cost is so much cheaper and highly scalable compared to traditional list building methods.

With your own lists, you own and control the traffic and can drive traffic to offers at will at very little cost. Which is key if you want to be successful at affiliate/CPA marketing Also, you're not at the mercy of any marketing platform that could one day make a change that adversely affects your ability to make a living / income.

When mailing, you want to skim off the top any fast-track conversions and then for long-term success, you want to always be collecting your opens / clickers, segmenting and removing unresponsive users...converting the leads from quantity to quality and into responsive lists. Which you can then also cross-promote other offers on the back-end.

So basically the real reason I heavily promote PPL offers because they provide the path of least resistance to generating conversions / $$$ and converting the data into cash-producing assets.

There's actually more to it than it sounds, but done right it can be extremely profitable. Everyone that I know that is in the business and knows what they are doing, for the most part, does 6-7 figures. While that's a huge range, much comes down to one's ability to scale and effectively build / manage the infrastructure needed to scale.

Also, as a side note. Once you have experience promoting PPL/CPA offers via email, you can go out and find companies that have opt-in and/or buyer lists that do little with them or nothing at all via email marketing and help them fully monetize their data.

These are mainly companies that call all the users and or don't know anything about promoting affiliate / CPA offers. This requires more work because you have to find the companies, wherewith the other options above it's easy to get access to data. This is what's considered 2nd party data, as you manage the companies data and monetize it for a percentage of the net profits generated.

Something to think about.

Traffic sources like google and Facebook ads work because real people are in google and facebook. If you are new find a offer that is already converting; choose a traffic source. That's it. If you are good at math, you find the number at what cost per click can I see to make that offer profitable. Once you find the number, set up a test budget and see if you can get profit. Don't make a mistake of putting thousands of dollars on traffic ; if you are not seeing profits on your test budget.

Join a free course that covers every single step and holds you by the hand. This is the easiest way to succeed


Hope that helps

Mirko

Hi Steve,
All these suggestions are fantastic and if you're new at this your head might be swimming and of course, you have to start somewhere. We all want to "start out fast out of the gate", but it takes time to figure out what's going to work best with your current skill set and if you want to be "selling" while you're in the tech learning faze. Lead Gen you're selling B2B; eComm you're selling to end-users; affiliate you're driving traffic while learning the "ropes".

Probably not much help, just sharing thoughts since I've been where you're at.

Good Luck whatever you decide and don't try to do it alone, it takes a lot longer and costs a lot more...

Melvin

You can make money from multiple streams of income. It's an old concept but definitely worth the shot.

If there's a will, there's a way.

I've done both.

E-commerce can make money much quicker, but you have overhead and have to deal with customer service.

Affiliate takes more time, but I enjoy it more. No more angry customers either

Whatever you do...be sure you can automate it as much as possible. If you got sick are you still making bank.

This time next year are you still paycheck to paycheck or you have a real asset like your own responsive Lists that you can make recommendations to on affiliate products and or products you created.

I completely understand your struggle with facebook ads. There are a lot of horror stories about it which is why I also avoided it. Instead I started with youtube advertising which works better for me.


Regarding your programs, always make sure that you see lots of other members having success with it and look if you are promoting a well working funnel system which gives you the ability to earn high-ticket commissions of $1000 - $2000.Otherwise the chances to fail and to lose money are extremely high especially when using paid ads.

Affiliate marketing is also a blooming industry and many profitable resources are being generated to increase the value of this field of marketing. Ecommerce marketing is severely popular and definitely for pre-established brands with a fair online presence. Based on your skills and goals, you can choose which one suits you best.

Consider going through Clickbank's comprehensive training program: Clickbank.com/learn (not an affiliate link) This program, created by the CEO of Clickbank, will teach you how to generate an income promoting affiliate products.

It's newbie friendly. The cost is about $47 a month, plus optional upsells, and in about 5 months you may learn enough to be earning a nice affiliate income and/or producing your own products.

Note there are other investments and recurring costs involved in getting set up and running a business. Just a few thousand dollars won't get you very far, so don't quit your job anytime soon.

Look also into the generous tax deductions available for home businesses to partially offset your income tax withholding. This alone could be as much as $300-$600 a month to invest in your business.

(Consult competent tax advisors experienced in current home business tax law)

Google ads are not affiliate friendly at all. I would read the terms for Google shopping to see if it's any different. Both are great models, affiliate marketing, or e-commerce.

Affiliate marketing may be a little easier to automate but it's a matter of preference. So that's one of the pros of affiliate marketing. But it can also be done with e-commerce. You can always outsource certain things.

Some of the cons with affiliate marketing are that you have to get familiar with tools and marketing methods that are affiliate friendly.

Something as simple as the Email marketing platform you use can have a huge effect. Some autoresponders are affiliate friendly while others are not.

You want to apply email marketing into your models so you want to choose the right tool, from the start. Some platforms are better for affiliate marketing and some are better for e-commerce

For e-commerce, if you are selling physical products or drop shipping you have to make sure you get well informed with the laws in your area, taxes, etc which should be done for any business model but some business models require a little more work in those areas.

They are both great business models but you want to analyze what suits you, what you are willing to do yourself, and if there's anything you can and are willing to outsource.

In my opinion, do your diligence to find the best product to promote. Also, it's very important to know how to create an affiliate website to generate free traffic to offer and not spending thousands of dollars on paid ads. But you will get it eventually

Most importantly you need to select a pathway and learn that 100%. if you don't know it will lead to losing money. If you are lazy to learn then you need to hire professionals who can do those tasks for you. However, you need some knowledge to check the progress of your startup as well as to check is going in the right direction to make money. Good luck

I found ecommerce to be very daunting - set up the store, ad products, figuring out what products are selling, getting access to the product to sell... Amazon is a great resource but your cut is so small.

I prefer digital products using affiliate products from sites like JVZoo, Warrior+ and Clickbank. No issues with product delivery, the products already created, and best of all you can choose products with a price point that can put some real money in your pocket.

Imagine getting 50% of a 400 - 900 dollar sale - and being able to do that numerous time through the month. This way your most difficult problem is getting traffic to your offer. There are so many traffic methods it's mind boggling.

Creating an opt-in page- easy, creating a pre-sell bridge page- easy, creating an email follow up sequence- semi easy. I found Igor Kheifhts 301K program very helpful in navigating this IM path.

Affiliate marketing seems a bit more daunting but is actually way more manageable than Ecommerce. It is profitable, less risky and very advantageous as compared to Ecommerce.

Fb is a trip I have problems with them also but now I just stick with free traffic and I switched to just google ads if I want to use ads.

As far as programs I've found some free ones that helped me get my start. Paying $1,000 for a course and then using paid traffic is a lot of money if u haven't made a sell. We're talking $500 and above just building up credibility. Surely if u target the right people you'll get a lot of clicks but no guaranteed sales.

Not saying that the programs don't work but you will still need extra money if you're gonna do paid ads.

If you are a beginner don't be afraid to start small and then build yourself up from there. Once they get your money then its all on you.

Amazon Fba and Dropshipping requires much more work than affiliate marketing. However the rewards are greater than affiliate marketing in my opinion. I am into all 3 and am making good money too. It is good earning different streams of income.

I personally have started with affiliate marketing which provided me great knowledge about online marketing and a kick start in internet marketing world. I then got into freelancing offering my online marketing services which lead to full time job at good pay. But then started ecommerce and affiliate matketing again as a side kick with all the knowledge gathered over time working in digital marketing field.

Main thing is to start and learn. Don't hesitate to implement stuff, theres a lot of free courses and information online. Keep learning and keep trying.